[ISN] E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible

[InfoSec News]

Fowarded from: Thor <thor at hammerofgod.com>

I vehemently disagree...  I can't imagine any scenario where anyone
outside of a 3 letter agency would even begin to see this as a good
thing.

As an ISP, you need only stipulate your virus scans and spam blocks as
part of the contractual agreement with your client- thus obtaining
"consent" for those actions.

The incredibly narrow interpretation of the term "in transit" by
Kermit the Judge, even in light of acknowledging the nature of the
required storage of electronic communications in some form, not only
creates precedent for future atrocities in regard to the violation of
our privacy in general, it grants specific sweeping powers to those
who wish to bypass the spirit of the wiretap law.

This a nothing but a Bad Thing (tm).

t


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "InfoSec News" <isn at c4i.org>
To: <isn at attrition.org>
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 5:34 AM
Subject: Re: [ISN] E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible


> Forwarded from: Mark Hoffer <hoffer53 at hotmail.com>
>
> Hello:
>
> Coming from the ISP side of things, this is a great sigh of relief.
> Before this ruling, some could have interpreted the law in a way that
> the ISP could not scan for viruses or block spam.  I agree that email
> should not be snooped on, but every user should know that the privacy
> of an email is like that of a postcard.
>
> Now about this wiretap law - is it unlawful for me to use a packet
> sniffer to troubleshoot a customer's connection and to watch for
> malicious traffic on my network?
>
> -Mark Hoffer
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "InfoSec News" <isn at c4i.org>
> To: <isn at attrition.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 7:33 AM
> Subject: [ISN] E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible
>
>
> > Forwarded from: Marjorie Simmons <lawyer at carpereslegalis.com>
> >
> > http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64043,00.html
> >
> > By Kim Zetter
> > June 30, 2004
> >
> > E-mail privacy suffered a serious setback on Tuesday when a court
> > of appeals ruled that an e-mail provider did not break the law in
> > reading his customers' communications without their consent.
> >
> > The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts ruled that Bradford C.
> > Councilman did not violate criminal wiretap laws when he
> > surreptitiously copied and read the mail of his customers in order
> > to monitor their transactions.
> >
> > Councilman, owner of a website selling rare and out-of-print
> > books, offered book dealer customers e-mail accounts through his
> > site. But unknown to those customers, Councilman installed code
> > that intercepted and copied any e-mail that came to them from his
> > competitor, Amazon.com. Although Councilman did not prevent the
> > mail from reaching recipients, he read thousands of copied
> > messages in order to know what books customers were seeking and
> > gain a commercial advantage over Amazon.